The Theseus Thesis
"Nicholas? Dost thou have a moment to spare?" Luna poked her head I through the door to Nick's suite of the castle. Nick put down the latest Daring Do book he was reading and nodded.
"I always have time for you and your sister, Luna. What's up? Judging by the fact it's not your off hours, I assume it's work related?"
"Yes. We are usually more than happy to help dear sister with her paperwork, but this order vexes us. Pray tell, dost thou know of any reason why twenty identical ships of interchangeable parts have been shipped to Ponyville, despite having nothing more than a pond in terms of aquatic locales?"
Nick shook his head for a moment. "Sorry, I wasn't paying full attention there. You said twenty boats got shipped to Ponyville? That is wierd. Let me see the order, maybe I can spot something out of place." Luna entered and huffed over the requested paperwork. Nick looked it over while his Lunar friend took a moment to get a drink of water and nibble on the flowers he left for her and Celestia's visits in a vase on the table. After a good ten minutes of reading and rereading the papers, Nick snapped his fingers triumphantly. "Eureka! I've got the answer!"
Luna looked up from her snapdragons with interest. "Well? Do not keep us in suspense, dear Nocholas."
He pointed to a few lines and explained. "Well, somepony shuffled the numbers around a a bit, but at its core the funds to buy those boats came directly from the royal science fund, which is used of experiments and advancements in technology. But there's only one pony in Ponyville with unfettered access to that fund..."
Luna finished his thought for him. "Twilight."
Ponyville was having a day of clear skies. The temperature was just right, not a cloud to be seen, and because it had been at least a week since the last fiasco, nopony paid any attention the twenty sailboats sitting in a hastily assembled dry dock next to castle friendship.
"Twi, why are we taking these apart and putting them back together?" Inquired Spike, the purple princess's number one assistant. "Didn't these all pass inspection?"
Twilight disconnected the mast with her magic and replaced it with antoher, not even looking at the drake. Her mane and tail were frazzled, and she was clearly close to going full 'lesson zero'. "It's not the integrity of the ships I'm checking! I have an experiment to run! This could be the the start of a great advancement in the field of logical thinking and science!"
"I think it's the start of a major headache. Twilight, what the heck are you doing?" Nick and Luna walked up to the excited purple pony, both wondering exactly how thos dry dock had been constructed so fast. Oh wait, Ponyville. Events like this are just as important to roll with as Pinkie's logic.
"Nick!" With a flap of her wings, Twilight jumped into Nick's arms for a hug, affectionately nuzzling him. "I've been working my tail off trying to figure out that problem you gave me! Sure, it distracted me from studying the effects of poision joke on humans, but this is now a major scientific study!"
Nick thought for a moment on what the pony in his arms was talking about. "Wait, are you actually trying to replicate the Ship of Theseus paradox? Why?!"
"I gotta know! Doesn't the unknown excite you?"
"And what, pray tell, is this paradox, Nicholas?" Luna asked.
Nick sighed. "It's a thought experiment. The idea is that if you have a boat made of replaceable parts, eventually you will have to replace every part. If you reassembled all the parts you replaced, the paradox lies in the question: which is your ship?"
"So I'm shuffling parts around to find out if I can solve it!" Twilight beamed.
Luna tilted her head, intruiged. "Fascinating. Is this anything like when you told her that 'This sentence is false'?"
Nick nodded, letting Twilight's mane to help calm her down. "Yup. There's never really a clear answer. It's meant to confuse the person, er, pony. I have a few other paradoxes stashed away in case I need to get away from Sparky here in a hurry."
"Don't be mean!" Twilight chided playfully, lightly hitting him with a hoof. Nick pretended not to notice. Luna allowed herself a refined giggle.
"But, it usually doesn't have to be a ship. Pretty much anything that has parts that can be replaced, the paradox applies. How much do you need to replace before it is a different thing? It could be a house, or a puzzle, or even a living being in some cases! The possibilities on how to word the question, and therefore the number of possible experiments, are...uh...endless. Uh oh..." he looked down at the excitedly quivering purple mass in his arms. "Twilight no."
"TWILIGHT YES!"
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I Am what I Am. I can be nothing else.
Vegeta no
VEGETA YES
An idea. Most of these pranks are something that ends with everyone ok and laughing at the end. With something like this it opens a way into what would happen if a prank went too far. Or crossed a line. Say if Blueblood got petty revenge via prank that went way to far where someone could have gotten badly if not fatally hurt. Or with twilight not knowing boundaries or some basic social interaction, take a prank to an almost felony level of dark.
Pranks are fun and games till someone has an allergic reaction to peanuts/shellfish or someone digs up some very nasty emotional issues.
As far as I'm aware, what makes a person their individual self is the structure and function of the brain. Memories, habits, behavioral traits, that sort of thing. You could also look at it in four-dimensional terms. Consider the body as an aggregate of worldlines, with new cells being added and old ones being cast off. The parts may change, but the whole is unaffected.
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So you're saying I'm not gonna escape on a technicality that you all aren't the same folks you were a month ago, therefore I didn't rickroll you all? Dang.
OH THE IMPLICATIONS!!!!
dazedimg.dazedgroup.netdna-cdn.com/830/azure/dazed-prod/1150/0/1150228.jpg
Museums are asking this questions all the time as they maintain their exhibits of cars, ships and planes. It it 10%, 50% or more though at some point it has to be different as you've completely replaced the original
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One of the alternate things Nick was originally planned to say was "Paradoxes like that are no different than 'This statement is false' or 'does a set containing all sets contain itself?' Wait... Twilight no."
Askin the tough questions.
A person is not their body. Otherwise, a man with one arm is less of a man. A person is the sum of their experiences. Now, with the imperfection of the human mind and inability for perfect recall, the ever changing experiences of life, the voluntary and involuntary changes to behavior and personality that comes from living in a nonstatic universe - the real questions are: have you ever been the same person and does it even matter?
I already have Socrates induced PTSD from playing Assassin's Creed Odyssey and this chapter and the comment section is further enhancing that trauma
Good job Nick, now she is going to pick apart all of everything, rearrange the pieces, and put them back together again. The world will be full of legos and Frankensteins
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"It could even work on molecules! It could work on ATOMS!"
"TWILIGHT NO!"
"TWILIGHT YES!"
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"Twilight"😒
"Yes nick?"
"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE?!"😠
"Science"
"..."😤😧
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Now that would be fun, A MLP LEGO game.
I'd say that so long as less than 50% of the object is replaced in one step, the whole object can be considered the same object. However, if more of it is new, then it's a new object. Regarding the 'which of the two, if any or both, is your ship?' thing, the latest ship is your ship. The parts that were replaced make a new ship.
typo
what?
yep, I'm still me. I'm not collection of the individual parts that create the creature that I am, but instead I am who I am because of the way I think
That said the ship of theseus can still apply to my phone. The only original part in that thing is the motherboard and even that has been modified. Is it still the same phone it once was or is it something completely different?
This actually is the basis of Windows DRM: you can replace up to two non-hotswappable parts (e.g. electronics that have to be enumerated post-POST (Power On Self Test) by the BIOS (e.g. your CPU, internal HDD/ODD, GPU, RAM, anything inside your computer)), except for the motherboard where microsoft legally defines it as the core of your computer.
In the case of an object, my though is when you get past 50% its no longer original. I own a few things that are 100% original and others that have parts replaced, by a technicality, they are not original. In the case of a human, the cell thing doesn't necessarily apply since they are replicated by the original.
Best chapter so far, the Theseus’ Ship paradox is always enjoyable to tell
Hypothetically, since you are purchasing the replacement parts, you still own all materials and both are yours.
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Did... did you actually copy-paste the ENTIRE CHAPTER for that comment? Just one or two lines would have sufficed...
I don't get this chapter. What did Twilight do that he finds objectionable?
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I thought they did it intentionally to archive the current version of the chapter for some reason.
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Nick's final comment is essentially "You could test this experiment by disassembling everything in ponyville." Then he realizes he said that to Twilight Sparkle, the only mare crazy enough to actually do that.
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Is he aware that she has an apprentice?
Yes, due to the information of “you” being transferred through the replacement
Actually, no, one is not who they were 5 years ago. In fact, one is not who they were 5 hours ago. It takes (it was either 2 or 4) hours for the neurotransmitters in the brain to complete one cycle of reuptake, basically a "refresh" of one's "mood". By that time, new thoughts have arrived, neurons have slightly reconfigured, and telomeres have slightly shortened, causing minute changes in DNA sequences in the body's cells. In fact, in one's own lifetime, one's DNA will have changed. Obviously not so much as to be considered a different organism, but enough to not be identical to oneself at any point in the past.
Actually I can pretty much guaranty that I am not the same person as the me from five years ago. My thought processes have changed as more data and experiences are garnered. That the pattern of the Freckles on my face change from year to year shows that I am constantly changing on a cellular level, is just Pudding for the proof.
However there is an Overall Pattern to the changes in thought, and physiology, that keeps the ever changing Core of Me, as still being me.
That there is a pattern to these Changes tells me that there is a plan in place, and that it may not be my own. Some thing in this universe has applied a me shaped Cookie Cutter to this world. and all of us can say the same for ourselves.
another
A man cannot cross the same river twice, for it's not the same river and he's not the same man. That said, the Ship of Theseus is one of those rare paradoxes that's actually worth thinking about, because there are edge cases in property law where the answer genuinely matters.
After a certain age you can no longer grow new neurons(the cells that make you you) or lose ones that have not been in use so after that point at every five years your body may be new but you will remain the same person you became at twenty
I'm not even the same person I was when I woke up this morning.
Seriously thou we are more than just the sum of our parts we are also our experiences our thoughts and a great many other things that are beyond Definition the body is merely a vesicle, a shell a container we are much more that this
roflmao she always need to have a answer to something if it doesn't have one she will make one for no reason other then there is a answer
Booksmart purple smart is acting stupid again